4 ms·

I see this opinion come up on HN frequently. You are not the intended target for a chatbot. You're right; for most tech-savvy users, the ideal interaction would

by axg11 5y ago

I see this opinion come up on HN frequently. You are not the intended target for a chatbot. You're right; for most tech-savvy users, the ideal interaction would be through a well designed UI. However, there's a significant portion of society that is not familiar with UIs and just wants to "speak to a person" and describe the issue they're trying to deal with. Chatbots are the closest thing we have to an automated version of that.

harha 5y ago
A/B test that: a well thought through UI vs a bot. I genuinely think it would be worse in time required for resolution, choice by the users. Obviously not one size fits all but in simple cases I doubt that even the non tech savvy user would prefer trying to articulate their issue in a way a bot could help them. Recently came across a delivery service which sent an sms announcing a delivery to connect me to a Facebook messenger bot to ask me the order number to give me the delivery information. How is this process better? Just send a link to the tracker and have all the necessary info in one place. Add a button to reach someone if you must.
- axg11 5y ago
  That's an example of a bad use of chatbots, but I don't think that means all chatbots are a bad interface. Chat is good when you have a large potential problem space and a wide range in the tech abilities of your users. A 90 year old grandpa isn't going to happily dig through five layers of menus to solve their problem. They are able to describe their problem in a couple of sentences though.
soco 5y ago
Have you, or whoever recommends that, ever talked to an actual non tech-savy person? I don't mean it like a "me as a non tech-savy person" role-playing, but to a real flesh and bone grandma.
- axg11 5y ago
  Yes, I'm basing this on experience. A non-savvy user sees most modern UIs as overwhelming, difficult to navigate and they don't have the same priors that the average HN reader does. When they see a chat pop-up, they see a familiar interface (SMS has been around for long enough) and it gives everyone literate the ability to describe in plain language what problem they are having.
- faizshah 5y ago
  My mom tries painfully hard to make Bixby do things for her. She will spend 20 minutes trying to get it to find her a recipe or something instead of using an app. I keep trying to tell her to stop wasting her time and just use google but I guess there is still some novelty in these conversational interfaces (clearly its not easier or faster). If she could use google home to fill out her time sheet or save a document to google drive she would. The thing she finds difficult about tech stuff is remembering the workflow of how to accomplish a task through multiple websites/apps. Also while I’m on my soap box this is a PSA to all ui devs, stop trying to turn every menu/button text into an icon. My mom does not even remember that the button with 3 horizontal lines means menu she is not going to understand that stamp icon means “add a signature.”
  - alexpotato 5y ago
    I remember reading an interview with Bill Gates about how "two way mirror" user testing where devs watch REAL users interact with their application is both incredibly important and humbling at the same time. The above quote is from the days where people bought shrink wrapped software so it was incredibly hard to observe people using your application in the wild. Therefore, companies spent money to do it in house to get better data. Modern web applications, I would argue, make observing user behaviour in real time trivially easy but I'm sure lots of companies don't even bother. In turn, this brings us to the incredibly complicated interfaces we have today.
dqv 5y ago
My sister came for a visit 3 weeks ago, actually, no, 4 weeks ago, it was the week before Christmas. We were celebrating her 31st birthday and we went out to a great local restaurant. They serve vegan and vegetarian food and we had a great time. I went Christmas shopping and found a lot of great gifts for my son and husband. Yada yada. Now Christmas rolls around and my husband opens the present - it's a Polo Ralph Lauren shirt I knew he would love. To my surprise, and you won't believe this, I got him the wrong size! I need to exchange the shirt for the right size. Hi I'm Macy, the Macy's chatbot. Thanks for reaching out! You need to exchange an item, is that correct?
- hooande 5y ago
  I'm calling BS. People definitely communicate like this, but no one types this into a chat window
  - BucketsMcG 5y ago
    You wouldn't believe some of the things people say to conversational interfaces. A long time ago – I'm talking early 2000s – I designed a voice UI for a train timetable information system. It was a phone line, you called it up, told it where you were travelling to and from, and it gave you the information you needed. After launch, I would listen to the odd call at random to see how it was handling things. I distinctly remember one case where, when asked their destination, the user said "I'm going to a funeral". Now, when somebody said something outside the scope of the expected responses, we would reprompt them up to twice more with a bit of extra guidance. I'm proud to say that, even though this caller started way off course, the system steered them back and they ended up going away with the information they needed. That's actually a danger of making your conversational interfaces too human-like - people then talk to them like they're humans, and it doesn't go well. You're better to make things a little stiff and robotic, so as to manage their expectations and make them understand that they need to constrain their answers a bit to get what they need. It might feel less natural, but everybody goes home happier at the end of the day.
  - dqv 5y ago
    It's, of course, made up. But everyone can appreciate the anguish of having to talk to someone like this and trying to discern what it is they actually need. Macy, the Macy's chatbot? They can go through hundreds of terms that correlate with resolutions in milliseconds. if chatMessage.contains?(typoOrExactMatch('exchange')) then chatSession.initiateExchange() end Like the grandparent explains, some people just need a way to explain what they need in their own words and I don't think chatbots completely fail at that. The best one's I've experienced have prescreened me for common issues and then sent me off to a live person as soon as it was clear my request was not easily addressed with the built in script.

by axg11 5y ago

harha 5y ago

A/B test that: a well thought through UI vs a bot. I genuinely think it would be worse in time required for resolution, choice by the users. Obviously not one size fits all but in simple cases I doubt that even the non tech savvy user would prefer trying to articulate their issue in a way a bot could help them. Recently came across a delivery service which sent an sms announcing a delivery to connect me to a Facebook messenger bot to ask me the order number to give me the delivery information. How is this process better? Just send a link to the tracker and have all the necessary info in one place. Add a button to reach someone if you must.

axg11 5y ago
That's an example of a bad use of chatbots, but I don't think that means all chatbots are a bad interface. Chat is good when you have a large potential problem space and a wide range in the tech abilities of your users. A 90 year old grandpa isn't going to happily dig through five layers of menus to solve their problem. They are able to describe their problem in a couple of sentences though.

soco 5y ago

Have you, or whoever recommends that, ever talked to an actual non tech-savy person? I don't mean it like a "me as a non tech-savy person" role-playing, but to a real flesh and bone grandma.

axg11 5y ago
Yes, I'm basing this on experience. A non-savvy user sees most modern UIs as overwhelming, difficult to navigate and they don't have the same priors that the average HN reader does. When they see a chat pop-up, they see a familiar interface (SMS has been around for long enough) and it gives everyone literate the ability to describe in plain language what problem they are having.
faizshah 5y ago
My mom tries painfully hard to make Bixby do things for her. She will spend 20 minutes trying to get it to find her a recipe or something instead of using an app. I keep trying to tell her to stop wasting her time and just use google but I guess there is still some novelty in these conversational interfaces (clearly its not easier or faster). If she could use google home to fill out her time sheet or save a document to google drive she would. The thing she finds difficult about tech stuff is remembering the workflow of how to accomplish a task through multiple websites/apps. Also while I’m on my soap box this is a PSA to all ui devs, stop trying to turn every menu/button text into an icon. My mom does not even remember that the button with 3 horizontal lines means menu she is not going to understand that stamp icon means “add a signature.”
- alexpotato 5y ago
  I remember reading an interview with Bill Gates about how "two way mirror" user testing where devs watch REAL users interact with their application is both incredibly important and humbling at the same time. The above quote is from the days where people bought shrink wrapped software so it was incredibly hard to observe people using your application in the wild. Therefore, companies spent money to do it in house to get better data. Modern web applications, I would argue, make observing user behaviour in real time trivially easy but I'm sure lots of companies don't even bother. In turn, this brings us to the incredibly complicated interfaces we have today.

dqv 5y ago

My sister came for a visit 3 weeks ago, actually, no, 4 weeks ago, it was the week before Christmas. We were celebrating her 31st birthday and we went out to a great local restaurant. They serve vegan and vegetarian food and we had a great time. I went Christmas shopping and found a lot of great gifts for my son and husband. Yada yada. Now Christmas rolls around and my husband opens the present - it's a Polo Ralph Lauren shirt I knew he would love. To my surprise, and you won't believe this, I got him the wrong size! I need to exchange the shirt for the right size. Hi I'm Macy, the Macy's chatbot. Thanks for reaching out! You need to exchange an item, is that correct?

hooande 5y ago
I'm calling BS. People definitely communicate like this, but no one types this into a chat window
- BucketsMcG 5y ago
  You wouldn't believe some of the things people say to conversational interfaces. A long time ago – I'm talking early 2000s – I designed a voice UI for a train timetable information system. It was a phone line, you called it up, told it where you were travelling to and from, and it gave you the information you needed. After launch, I would listen to the odd call at random to see how it was handling things. I distinctly remember one case where, when asked their destination, the user said "I'm going to a funeral". Now, when somebody said something outside the scope of the expected responses, we would reprompt them up to twice more with a bit of extra guidance. I'm proud to say that, even though this caller started way off course, the system steered them back and they ended up going away with the information they needed. That's actually a danger of making your conversational interfaces too human-like - people then talk to them like they're humans, and it doesn't go well. You're better to make things a little stiff and robotic, so as to manage their expectations and make them understand that they need to constrain their answers a bit to get what they need. It might feel less natural, but everybody goes home happier at the end of the day.
- dqv 5y ago
  It's, of course, made up. But everyone can appreciate the anguish of having to talk to someone like this and trying to discern what it is they actually need. Macy, the Macy's chatbot? They can go through hundreds of terms that correlate with resolutions in milliseconds. if chatMessage.contains?(typoOrExactMatch('exchange')) then chatSession.initiateExchange() end Like the grandparent explains, some people just need a way to explain what they need in their own words and I don't think chatbots completely fail at that. The best one's I've experienced have prescreened me for common issues and then sent me off to a live person as soon as it was clear my request was not easily addressed with the built in script.